Hunt the Dragon

by Don Mann

  He left the infil part dangling for the time being. “Why only four?”

  “Because we want to keep the footprint as small as possible,” replied Anders. “Optimally, we’d like the mission to have no U.S. footprint at all. But that’s probably outside the realm of possibility, because the South Koreans want no part of this.”

  Crocker deduced from his answer that they’d already been asked and had declined.

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  “One, they say they’re committed to a political program of normalizing relations with North Korea. And, two, they’re obviously worried about military repercussions, though they won’t admit that. Suffice it to say, the DPRK has an army of over a million, a lot of them are deployed within a hundred miles of Seoul, and they’re fucking crazy.”

  “Got it.”

  Anders rubbed his square chin. “There’s several other aspects of this to consider,” he stated. “One is that Min has offered to be part of the mission.”

  “Min, the defector?” Sutter asked. “Are we sure that’s wise? Can we trust him?”

  Anders turned to Brooke, who answered, “Based on everything we know, yes. The South Koreans are extremely thorough in the way they vet DPRK defectors.”

  “But loyalties in that part of the world are tricky, so there’s always a chance, correct?” Sutter asked.

  “I would characterize it as slight probability,” hedged Anders.

  Crocker spoke up. “Whatever the odds, it means we could be screwed the moment we launch.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Anders replied. “Nevertheless, Min has given us a detailed picture of the layout, entrance and egress points, and resources on the island. All of which has been matched against drawings that Choi smuggled out.”

  “Sat and electronic surveillance?” Crocker asked.

  “The full three-sixty package of surveillance assets have been deployed, as well as a complete target profile amalgamated from other DPRK defectors.”

  “When was the last time Min was physically on the island?” Crocker asked.

  “Roughly a year ago,” Anders answered.

  “How sure are we that the presses, missile research program, and U.S. engineer are still there?”

  “In terms of the first two, ninety-nine percent. Obviously, we can’t see them from the air, but the heat signatures around the entrance continue to be strong. Obviously, the engineer is easier to move, so his location is very difficult to confirm.”

  “He have a name?” asked Crocker.

  “James Dawkins,” Dina Brooke answered, reaching into a folder and producing a photo of the engineer, which she handed to Crocker.

  Crocker had been in this business long enough to know he had to discount all CIA odds by at least twenty percent. Which meant that there was a better than even chance that the presses and missile program were still on Ung-do and operational. In terms of the engineer, it was anybody’s guess.

  “How well fortified is the facility and how far underground?” Crocker asked.

  “You’ll find all that detail in the document in front of you. Page three.”

  “Thanks.” He jotted down some facts in his notebook: reinforced concrete walls, bomb-resistant roof, target approximately thirty meters underground.

  “What are we looking at in terms of possible exposure to radiation?”

  Brooke jumped in. “It’s a missile research facility that according to what we know is devoted to two important tasks, reducing the size of the warheads and increasing the accuracy of their missile guidance systems. We can’t confirm the presence of active nuclear material.”

  “Nothing has been picked up by airborne monitoring,” added Anders.

  “But we don’t know for sure?”

  “No.”

  “I’m assuming that we’ll be taking out the complex with explosives,” Crocker said.

  “Correct. And you’ll probably have to carry the material in yourself. Because of the high level of local security, we don’t think it’s possible to drop anything on the island or immediate vicinity.”

  Sutter spoke up. “DARPA has developed something that you’ll want to get your hands on. It’s currently the most powerful nonnuclear explosive in existence. Insensitive to shock like TNT, and has twenty-five percent more explosive power than HMX.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “CL-20. Like HMX, it has an extremely fast explosive velocity.”

  “Suarez know about it?” Crocker asked, referring to Black Cell’s explosives expert.

  “I believe so. Yes.”

  “Then I want him included,” Crocker concluded. “We have anyone on the teams who speaks Korean?”

  “There’s a sniper on Team Three named Sam Lee,” Sutter reported. “Strong, smart kid. Good reputation. He’s a native speaker.”

  “I want to meet him this afternoon.”

  “Done.

  Dawkins awoke seated in a chair in his room. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or what he saw was real. Kwon was holding his mouth open with one hand and a flashlight in the other, as a man with a very thin face and bad breath used a dental instrument to examine his teeth.

  The man muttered something and nodded, and Dawkins drifted off.

  Next thing he remembered was Kwon helping him into bed. The box of videos, VCR, and TV were gone. So were his pens and notebooks. With his tongue he felt the empty space where his tooth had been.

  Sung emerged from the bathroom carrying a wet washcloth. When he sat up and blinked, the older woman was in her place instead.

  “Where’s Sung?” he asked in a weak voice.

  Kwon barked something in Korean and left.

  Dawkins’s body felt like it was burning. Someone placed a cool washcloth on his forehead. He looked up and thought he saw Sung.

  “Sung, I’m so sorry.”

  He heard someone humming the lullaby she had sung to him about the mother going out to look for food for her infant son. But when he focused on the woman’s face, it didn’t belong to Sung, and her lips weren’t moving.

  Crocker was sitting in his rental car in the Doheny State Beach parking lot, just south of Dana Point, reviewing the mental checklist in his head, when a guy who met Sam’s description pulled up in a late-model pickup and got out. He strode like an athlete and stood about six two, with a sidewall haircut and a SEAL Trident tattooed on his shoulder. His size and large nose were the only clues that he wasn’t a hundred percent Korean.

  “Sam?”

  He smiled. “Warrant Officer Crocker.”

  “Thanks for coming. You ready to run?”

  Crocker led the way across the sand, down past San Clemente to San Onofre, sweet ocean air in his face, the sun shining over his shoulder, enjoying the pulse of movement, freedom, and space. Surfers to their right, sunbathers on their left. Nature at full astonishment. He didn’t even think of stopping to buy a bottle of water until they reached Camp Pendleton South, by which time they had covered more than twenty miles.

  Sam had kept stride the whole way. When he finally stopped, Crocker slapped him on the back.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, sir. I was warned about you. We running back?”

  “Let’s talk first.”

  They stretched their legs on a dune looking out over the ocean and Sam started telling him about his family. Both mother and stepfather were immigrants from poor farming communities in South Korea. At nineteen his stepdad got a job as a cook and mechanic with the U.S. Navy. A friendly commander sponsored his immigration to the States. He arrived in North Carolina and worked in the retired commander’s nursery business. Just when he started to think of moving on, he met his former wife, Sam’s mother, rifling through a trash bin outside a Winston-Salem supermarket. He was twenty-six and gainfully employed. She had just turned twenty-eight, was a single mother, homeless, and completely broke.

  “He took us in that day and we’ve been together since,” Sam said. “My parents just celebrated their twen
tieth anniversary. They also gave me a younger brother and sister.”

  Crocker tried to focus, but he kept returning to the long checklist in his head—comms, weapons, medical kits, et cetera. “Tell me about your father,” he said, reminding himself that his men would be arriving in an hour and his first task would be to talk to Suarez about the CL-20.

  “Supersolid; never complains. My mother is my inspiration. She started working in rice paddies at the age of five, where she had to slice leeches off her leg with a machete. At sixteen she was discovered one night making out in the backseat of a rich boy’s car, which caused her to be shunned by her family and kicked out of school.”

  Crocker flashed back to his own high school in Massachusetts and one of several times he’d been expelled—for punching the captain of the football team and breaking his nose.

  “The only way she could support herself was by working as a prostitute at a nearby U.S. Navy base. At eighteen she met a young American ensign who fell in love with her and took her back home with him to Pensacola. That’s where they married and where I was born. But my dad’s parents shunned their Korean daughter-in-law, and my mother had big dreams. She wanted to go to college, so she started her own business, which was selling cosmetics door-to-door.

  “My father imagined a more traditional role for her. They fought and separated. She met another man, who moved us up to Winston-Salem and then abandoned us. Today she’s a successful businesswoman with a college degree and a dozen stores throughout Southern California. Next year she’s planning on running for mayor of Newport Beach.”

  “Sounds like an amazing lady,” Crocker said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d like to meet them when we get back.”

  “Absolutely, chief. Where are we going?”

  “The mission is top secret. I’ll tell you later. After we run back to our vehicles, grab your gear and meet me at NAB Coronado. Be there at 2100.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nan sat in the bedroom of her temporary apartment Google-mapping the island of Ung-do, North Korea. A rough gray oval surrounded by light blue appeared on the screen of her laptop. Shifting to “Earth” mode, she saw the shape turn green and the water surrounding it dark blue. When she zoomed in closer, a few concrete structures became visible in the middle of the island.

  She wondered if James was living in one of them and what he was doing. For a few seconds she felt close to him, as though they were communicating telepathically and focusing on him had caused him to think of her.

  The FBI agents she’d met that afternoon had told her that the United States was taking steps to get her husband back. But they wouldn’t specify what that meant, nor would they give her a timetable. She’d heard about American prisoners held in captivity in the jungles of South America for a dozen or more years before a rescue or exchange, or until the guerrillas holding them got tired of doing so and let them go.

  How long would it be before she saw James again?

  Knowing he was alive made waiting more difficult. Part of her had been preparing for a life without him. Now she understood that the story of their lives together, as intricately woven as it was already, would continue and grow more complex.

  It was natural to idealize those who had died. The living were far more challenging. In the past she’d respected James more than she had loved him. But the grim reality of what they were both going through had changed her. She sensed that it wouldn’t be enough for either of them to comfortably coexist the way they had before. They had to either love each other honestly and completely, or move on. It scared her, but it excited her, too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Crocker’s head hurt as he sat in the operations room of the USS Carl Vinson 340 miles west of the Japanese island of Sado in the Sea of Japan. He wasn’t sure if the source of his discomfort was lack of sleep, dehydration, or the massive amount of information he’d been trying to cram into his brain.

  The logistics of an op this complex and difficult were daunting to say the least, and because the new moon was three nights away and the threat was that some sort of nuclear test or strike might be imminent, they wanted to launch soon. Five men—Davis, Suarez, Sam, Akil, and himself—would be entering enemy territory to perform a sabotage mission. Everything they carried had to be impossible to trace. Since they would be infiltrating in a very tight SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV), the amount of gear they could carry was severely restricted. Additionally, they would be traveling in what was essentially an open-water underwater vehicle, so all comms, weapons, ammo, medical equipment, electronic devices, and explosives had to be sealed in waterproof bags.

  Crocker hated the very cramped SDVs. He would have much preferred to parachute in or swim. But given the parameters of the mission, the fact that they expected a high level of security on and around Ung-do, any other type of boat, scuba, or air insertion seemed out of the question.

  For what seemed like the hundredth time in the past several hours, Crocker pored over the hand-drawn layouts of the complex and satellite photos of the island that Akil and the ship’s operations officers had blown up and marked with colored stickers and pins. The real issue was whether they should drive the SDV to the more desolate and less fortified Ryo-do, about three-quarters of a mile south, and swim from there, or infil directly to the southeastern shore of Ung-do itself.

  Ung-do, sometimes referred to as Ungdo-ri, was one of the smaller islands in the Pansong Archipelago, located off the coast of Cholsan county. It had an average elevation of fifty-six feet and stood at 36º16'77" north latitude and 127°37'23" east longitude. Given the probability that they would be dealing with cold water and strong currents between the two islands, Crocker chose a direct landing as the preferred option.

  How they would proceed once they got on the island was more problematic. Based on the intel he had at his disposal, it was impossible to tell how well fortified the underground facility was and what kind of resistance they would meet when they got there. Heat signature profiles indicated that there were armed guards stationed at the main entrance and around all four corners of the complex 24/7. Also, the road that ran up the middle of the island and along the western shore was patrolled by armed vehicles at least every half hour.

  Crocker marked a small cove and beach on the eastern side, almost due east of the facility. “I propose that we land here.”

  Min, who sat to Crocker’s right, unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and popped it through the hole in his white hockey mask. He seemed distracted by the framed photos of F-15s on the walls.

  “Min?”

  He slowly turned to Crocker like a character in a horror movie.

  “Sam, ask him how far this is from the complex,” Crocker said, pointing at the proposed landing site. Min leaned forward and frowned as though he were seeing the map for the first time. He said something in Korean and groaned.

  Crocker was starting to worry about Min’s state of mind. He’d already decided not to take the North Korean defector on the mission, but he still had to rely on him for critical information. The U.S. intelligence community hadn’t been able to locate a single other individual who had visited Ung-do.

  “About a quarter mile,” Sam translated. “Getting from there to the complex means we have to cross the road.”

  “Got it.”

  “Only trees and a little stream here,” Sam added. “The island is relatively flat.”

  There appeared to be no other man-made structures or geographic obstacles in the way.

  “What’s your opinion, Min?” Crocker asked.

  Sitting there in an olive-green flight suit and rubbing the stubble on his neck, he seemed a million miles away.

  “Min, are you with us? Is something wrong?”

  Min mumbled something to Sam, who translated. “Yes. He thinks it is a logical choice. The buildings here sou
th of the complex…this is housing for the guards. The only way to reach the island is by boat. Boat is best for us, too. The dock is here.”

  Min pointed to a small man-made cove on the southwestern side, facing the mainland and the city of Munchon.

  “Is the dock well guarded?” Crocker asked.

  “Yes. Machine guns. DShK antiaircraft.”

  Crocker didn’t want to have to mess with them. “So the east side is better?” he asked.

  “Yes, better. Yes.”

  Gaining entrance to the complex itself presented another set of challenges. The layout showed two entrances, front and back, a large ventilation shaft at the north end of the complex and a long underground drain that emptied into the north end of the bay.

  “I assume both entrances are heavily guarded,” said Crocker, turning to Sam and Min, and trying to squeeze as much info out of Min as he could.

  Sam translated again. (He was proving to be extremely useful.) “Always two soldiers in the front, two in the back. Sometimes more. Inside there is a vestibule with a stairwell and two elevators. We might find other soldiers…or patrols…inside. The printing presses are one level down…to the north. So you enter from the front…turn right. If we go in at night, the door will probably be locked.”

  “What about the labs?”

  “Those are located on the second floor.”

  “Any idea where the hostage is being held?”

  Min shook his head.

  The Vinson’s operations officer appeared at the door to announce that a Blackhawk helicopter would be ready at 2130 to ferry the insertion team to the USS Dallas, a nuclear-powered attack submarine currently twenty-one miles off Ung-do.

  Crocker looked at his watch: 2041.

  “Okay, grab your gear and assemble on the flight deck at 2115. You have any messages to send home, best do it now, because comms will be restricted when we get closer to our target.”

  “Roger.”

  “Akil, make sure you collect all maps and charts.”